Does what you are doing need to be finished to be valuable?
Posted on December 16th, 2009 in Leadership, Learning, Personal awareness, Personal development |
In the most recent Metasaga ( more info at the foot of this post) we led a group round the National Gallery of Scotland to look for metaphors in the paintings.
Lesley ( my co-guide) and I had chosen a number of stops between us for questions. The final one was mine. It is a painting by Italian painter Correggio and hangs near the entrance of the gallery. The painting is complete except for the central figure which is still in a sort of sketched format. I have tried researching this more but drawn a blank so if I get the artistic comments wrong please forgive - or correct - me.
I understand that this might have been a draft for another picture. Or the central figure might have been left deliberately blank so that a patron could be painted in. Whether either of those are accurate this unfinished painting was bought by another artist ( who clearly admired the work) and is thought to be sufficiently important to be hung in the gallery.
Bearing this in mind the questions I had at that stop on the Metasaga were
Do you have anything unfinished ( and maybe even put aside or discarded) that would be valuable to others? Maybe they would be willing to take it over and develop it further? Or work in collaboration to finish it with you?
Does what you are doing have to be finished to be valuable?
I actually thought I had posted on this topic already and I realised that I hadn’t when I read this excellent post from Ian Aspin on his Really Good Thinking blog which includes another question on the same theme
“Let’s stop right now and ask “what are we not deciding/starting/doing/finishing now because we don’t think it’ll be perfect?”.”
Worth thinking about?
4 Responses
Jackie - the list of what I’ve not finished is endless! I actually think that real experimentation requires starts..and stops.. and discards.. and more starts etc When you’re a bit of a perfectionist especially, it goes on and on.
I don’t think you have to absolutely feel you need to finish something EVER. Value often comes from learning which is all about trying things and trying again. And there’s often value in bringing in collaborators to take your original idea forward.
Incidentally, I have a painting at home, by American artist Noah Saterstrom, which some people might consider ‘unfinished’ but which is intended to look as it does, and is, in my view, ‘perfect’.
Thanks for sharing Dilly. And I totally agree with trying and retrying. I make jewellery as a hobby and I am happy to keep breaking pieces up and remodelling until I get what I want and the process of experimentation often gives me ideas for completely different things….
Sometimes the value in an unfinished project is simply the learning that occurred while it was worked on. Whether it lives on as a thing of value in other’s eyes becomes unimportant because it was a stepping stone towards an end. But what we learn by doing others might learn from observation - reviewing an unfinished work for what went right and then what led to it’s abandonment might provide the greatest insight.
You have really made me think Fred - thanks for that. The potential for that great insight huge - but probably often overlooked….